That Damned Cat
by FangirlAttack
Summary: Marik Ishtar Is Just A Lonely Boy Without A Family, That Is Until He Recieves A Strange Creature From A Mysterious Old Man. Now He And His Friend Ryou Must Work Together To Unlock The Mysteries Of This Strange Creature. AU Slight Thiefshipping Later
1. What Is This Thing?

**Well, This Story Idea's Been Bugging Me For Two Days Or So Now So Here Goes Nothing, My First Try At A Half-Decent Thiefshipping Story (Kinda Cause It's Really More Just Friendship But Still)**

**Enjoy! =3**

**(I Don't Own Yu-Gi-Oh By The Way Cause If I Did This Wouldn't Be A Fanfiction It Would Be A Movie! X3)**

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><p><strong>They say a man's best friend is a dog, but this is not always precisely the case.<strong>

**The role of man's best friend could be filled by many things, be it dogs, books, other people … or even a cat.**

The boy heaved a sigh as he tramped down the street. Under his plain light blue schoolbag, he wore a light purple hoodie, his favourite colour, with four buttons on the front, chains suspended from one to the other across his chest. On the bottom he wore light blue faded jeans and a worn pair of trainers, perhaps not the most fashionable of clothing but he favoured them above everything else and so wore them most often. He was tanned and had light blond hair, the fringe of which peeked down over his eyes, slightly reducing his line of view but not enough to bother him. The boy's name was Marik, Marik Ishtar.

As he walked home from school alone his mind went over it's usual agenda of less than ecstatic memories and ideas. He was long used to walking home alone by now, it had been years since he'd started school and he'd been living alone ever since he could remember. Every so often his best friend, his only friend and the closest he had to family, Ryou would walk with him. He appreciated Ryou's company greatly but at the not so tender age of 15 he couldn't help but wish for the family that he'd wished to know since childhood.

Marik knew better than anyone that wishing didn't help, if it did he would've had help long ago, back at the age of 6 or 7 when wishing for his family was a nightly ritual. His routine typically involved going to school, coming home, doing his homework and going to bed (meals in their usual places) and doing it all with a faux smile. He wasn't entirely unhappy though, he had Ryou to thank for that, but he wasn't exactly bouncing off the walls with excitement about a new day to come. Marik was in a halfway point, he had as much to regret as he had to be thankful for, so he did his best not to grieve over it or do any wishing towards a better life.

However, today something was rooted in Marik's brain, something that sounded ridiculous even to him but it had been nagging him since he'd woken up this morning.

The idea that a single wish could change it.

He turned a corner getting closer and closer to his house, the idea making itself louder and more present in his mind, bouncing off of every other thought that dared try to fill it's place and making it clearer and more apparent to the boy that it didn't intend to cease causing him irritation until it's desire was fulfilled.

"alright fine!" Marik exasperatedly whispered to himself.

He took in a deep breath and sighed hopelessly, not expecting much of anything more than broken hopes to come from this, but he continued and closed his eyes.

"I wish for a family"

No sooner had he whispered the simple yet deep phrase that a frail, well-hidden hand placed itself on the boy's shoulder, causing his eyes to snap open and his whole body to flinch. Marik gasped and turned quickly, shuffling back from the person all the while. As the boy twisted on the spot it was revealed to him a cloaked figure, about the same height as him but considerably older. A wrinkled face smiled at him from under the hood of the black shawl as he tried to shake a bony hand from his arm.

"you" said the figure, their voice obviously worn with age, but something of interest sparked in it.

Marik stepped back a bit more and tried to stutter an uneasy "me?" back at the person, but the words failed him.

"there was once a thief" the man began, taking his hand off the boy and waving it around to add a sense of mystery to his tale. " he was not bad, but he was punished greatly by the gods, and turned into a cursed creature!".

"I, I-" Marik tried to think back and make sure he'd never stolen anything, he wasn't sure what the man's point was or why he was telling him any of this.

"you, Marik!" the man pointed an old finger at the boy. Marik froze, a sudden sinking feeling building in him like a bubble of worry being pumped full to bursting. "how do you know my name?" he asked, sounding more afraid than he had hoped.

"fate!" came the reply with an almost jazz-hands-like action. "I have something that belongs to you Marik!" he wheezed in his dusty, rigid old voice. Until then Marik hadn't looked down or dared take his eyes off the man's face at all. The old figure produced from seemingly nowhere a pet carrier, darkened from the inside so that death itself couldn't see in. Before he could have guessed what was going on, the carrier was thrust into Marik's chest, his arms quickly folded around it as he stumbled back slightly and regained the breath that was knocked out of him.

He looked confusedly down at the object in question and shot the man a pleading and baffled look.

"that cursed creature belongs to you by fate Mr Ishtar!" the man explained, "it has run away from every other possessor in a matter of hours, now it is yours to bear".

"bu-, but I don't-" Marik stuttered as he offered the cage back to the man who was currently turning to leave.

"fate, Mr Ishtar" the man reaffirmed with a slight glare before staggering down the street. "don't open that box or try to view the creature until you are safely home Marik" he cried to the dumbstruck boy before disappearing down the path, leaving a confused, somewhat frightened Marik desperately clutching onto the pet carrier as he stared in disbelief in the direction of the now departed man.

He finally glanced down at the mystery item amongst his arms. It was silent and dark, but just heavy enough to prove that there was indeed something within it. The old man's words echoed in his mind, _"don't open that box or try to view the creature until you are safely home Marik"._

"what is this thing?"


	2. Where Did You Find This?

Marik sat on his bed, thoughts ricocheting off the walls of his mind like hail stones on the ground. Ideas, thoughts, questions, lots of questions. Who was that old man? How did he know his name? Why did he tell him that story? What did he mean about fate? What was this thing?

Only that last question was the one he could answer. He looked up from his stripy red and black covers at the pet carrier. The wire door was facing him but somehow it was still filled with darkness so he couldn't see what was in it. He took a moment to ponder over which was a worse idea, opening it or leaving it shut. If he opened the box, there might be something dangerous or bad in there, but if he left it shut he would never know, or something worse might happen to him because of that, he wasn't usually superstitious or paranoid like that, but the encounter with that mysterious old man had left him a bit shaken.

Finally he convinced himself to open the cage. The man had told him before that it was fate that he had the thing in the first place, he reasoned fate wouldn't put him in danger like that for no good reason.

Carefully he pushed himself up so that he sat cross-legged in front of the box. Taking a deep breath, he placed a tan hand on the cold metal latch and slowly pulled it to the other side, constantly working quietly as if he were afraid of disturbing whatever presently resided in the carrier. Finally the door to the pet carrier was open, although darkness was still seeping out from within. He remembered what the man had said, _"that cursed creature belongs to you by fate Mr Ishtar!" "it has run away from every other possessor in a matter of hours, now it is yours to bear"._

Marik slid back off his bed and sat on his knees on the floor instead, making a space between himself and this so-called 'cursed creature'. Before he had time to think any further about any of the details surrounding this animal there was a noise from the cage. A short, quiet shuffling noise, as if whatever was in the carrier had just become aware that the door was open, that freedom was a mere few steps away.

The boy leaned down, folding his arms on the bed and placing his head on them to try to get a better look inside the pitch-black box. Suddenly two eyes opened within the darkness, Marik recoiled slightly, startled by the sudden appearance of life, but there was something else disquieting about it. Those dark brown eyes, had they been any darker they'd have blended in perfectly with the shadows inside the case. They pierced Marik's own lavender eyes and went straight through to his soul.

He was left gawping at the creature while it made it's first appearance. It narrowed it's eyes at him, a routine expression for this animal, and began to stagger forwards, slowly and somewhat cautiously, but with no signs of fear anywhere about the creature as it came forth out of the darkness and into the light of the boy's room.

Marik would have imagined some ugly monstrosity to drag itself out of the cage, with extra limbs, drool hanging from it's mouth, eyes crazed and vicious, a truly nightmare worthy mess that would attack him and rip out his organs, scratch up his face, leave him in a bloody mess on the floor, never to be found. This was what the teenager imagined when the words 'cursed creature' rang through his mind clearly from the old man's mouth, but quite the opposite came quietly tip-toeing out of the cage.

A white cat stood before him. It was rather small, perhaps average sized for a cat and fairly thin. It had various tufts of fur protruding from it's small body, it's elbows, it's knees, it's ears, a noticeable amount from it's chest and it's head. The fur on it's head sat over it's face somewhat, acting like a fringe to block out some of those piercing eyes it had earlier shocked the child with, much like Marik's own fringe but slightly different, Marik's fringe was at either side of his eyes whereas the cat's was directly in the middle of his face, dipping a little to it's right side. It was pure white, a complete inverse to the container it had just stepped out from, and it bore those deep, chocolate eyes upon it's scowling face. You'd think with all the fluff and fur it would look cute and huggable like a kitten should, but this one stood on the bed looking refined and proud and defiant, much like it's personality as Marik would come to discover.

For a few seconds they both just stared at each other, Marik in awe of the creature and the cat glaring at him expectantly.

"uh, …hi!" Marik said nervously, reaching a hand towards the cat to see what it would do. It did nothing. The feline glared some more before sitting down on the bed and continuing to study the boy carefully.

Marik was uneasy. He didn't know what to do, he'd never had a pet before and he didn't even know if this one was a boy or a girl, he didn't want to check in case it would create a bad first impression of him for the animal, so he decided it best to assume the cat a boy for the time being. The next most important thing he needed to know was it's name, perhaps if he could gain this information he could decipher it's gender from there. Upon studying the cat he found it had no collar. He peeked around it at the carrier, all the while being watched by it, only to find that, while the darkness had curiously disappeared from it, there was no collar or information in there either.

"so what's your name?" Marik asked, smiling at the cat. It wasn't until after he'd said it that it occurred to him how silly it sounded to ask a cat it's name. it wasn't as if it had any way of telling him, but he needed to find out somehow. As expected, the feline stared at him angrily, not warming up to the child one bit. Marik rubbed the back of his head and frowned at the animal. "great" he sighed sarcastically, "how am I supposed to find out what your name is?".

_"maybe I'll call Ryou and ask him what to do"_ he thought as he walked to the door and stopped. "be right back okay?" he said casually over his shoulder as he exited the room, moved down the hall and rushed down the stairs. He picked up his phone from the living room and jumped back up each step, flicking through his phonebook to find Ryou's number. Marik pushed the door to his room open and glanced up to make sure the cat was okay but had to double take, his room was a mess! His sheets were on the floor with a tear through them, his pillow lying against the bed in a similar state, his bin tipped over and pieces of crumpled up paper sprinkled across the floor, the drawers in his chest of drawers were either crooked or open, having been searched through and his clothes, furniture and homework were lying all over the floor!

"wh-…huh?" he gasped as he entered, having the breath knocked right out of him yet again. As soon as he'd made his presence known, the cat peeked out from behind the bed. Marik gaped at the feline who disappeared behind the bed again and quickly came sauntering out with something in his mouth. He leaped up onto the bed again, sitting down in his noble manner and dumped the item in question on the mattress in front of him.

Marik stepped forward cautiously, he hadn't even heard anything and yet it looked as if a tornado had recently had a tantrum in his room. He picked up the item his new feline 'friend' had torn apart his room to find, it was something he hadn't seen since he was about 7. A cardboard tube he'd covered with foil and painted gold. He'd stuck a ping-pong ball on top and painted that too along with a pair of pointy shapes he'd cut out of cardboard. He'd made it as a sceptre when he was younger and used to play a game with Ryou where they would pretend that they were superheroes that got their special powers from their magical items. His was called the millennium rod, a funny name he admitted now, but he loved it then none-the-less. Ryou's had been a necklace consisting of a triangle within a ring with some bits of card dangling from it. Ryou tied it onto a shoelace and wore it around his neck, calling it his millennium ring. They'd had hours upon hours of fun with those trinkets back then, but had put them away when they started high school, he hadn't seen either of them since, until now. He looked it over, it was in great shape considering it was made by a lonely 7-year-old and all the years it had been missing.

"where did you find this?"


	3. Bakura

"Weird" Ryou said, deep in thought about this situation as he moved along in the lunch line. That morning at school Marik had told Ryou everything that had happened yesterday, leaving out certain unneeded details to make room for events that he deemed more important to how freaky his new pet was. They shuffled along the metal bars with their colourful plastic food trays, picking up items of interest along the way.

"Oh yeah, and you'll never guess what it did this morning!" he announced, telling it to his friend as it happened in his mind.

_Marik came down the stairs after getting dressed for school, his usual outfit, same as it had been yesterday and countless days before that. He closed his eyes and yawned as he entered the living room to pick up his bag and head out but stopped when he felt a strange sensation crumpling under his socks._

_He looked down only to find lined paper shredded all over the floor. It looked to familiar, his brow furrowed as he leaned down to pick some of it up. The realisation dawned on him once it was in his hands and his eyes snapped open with the speeding up of his heart._

_"KITTY!" he screeched, forgetting about who may or may not have been sleeping at that time. A now well-known cat raised it's head from the chair it had been resting on and glared at the loud boy, not happy with having it's nap interrupted so soon. "What did you do this for kitty?" Marik scowled, pointing his torn maths homework at the indifferent feline. For lack of a better name, he'd taken to calling him under the pet name kitty, although it didn't sit quite right with the cat. He stretched his front paws forward and yawned, flashing his sharp albeit small fangs at Marik for the first time, replacing anger in the boy with slight fear over getting bitten with those teeth. The cat quickly leaped over onto the coffee table and sat in front of another 2 or 3 sheets of paper, his tail swaying back and forth behind him._

_"What's this?" Marik said, more to himself than the animal, as he picked up the sheets and scanned them for clues. "hey! This is my history homework!" he chimed and leaned up, scanning over each page to make sure it was all together and all right. "Why did you rip up all my homework except history?" he raised an eyebrow to the feline who simply stared discontentedly in his direction before hopping back onto the chair and curling up in reply._

"That is strange" Ryou commented sitting down next to Marik, his story had taken them all the way to their lunch table. "So have you named it?"

"What do you mean?" he blinked, unsure of Ryou's topic as his mind had floated off into another memory.

"Your cat!" Ryou giggled at his ever-unconscious friend, "what do you think you'll name it?".

"Oh," Marik said as he stared down at his tray in deep thought, "I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it." he admitted. Without giving Ryou any time to start rhyming off good names for cats he quickly added, "besides, I think it already has a name" before taking a bite of his sandwich.

"How could it already have a name?" the albino boy chirped, "oh!" he suddenly piped up, answering his own question, "you think that man named him?".

Marik nodded, mouth still full of food.

"Hmm," Ryou hummed, concentrating his thoughts on the matter towards the table in front of him as he took a bite of his muffin.

A short silence passed as the boys finished their lunches and set down their rubbish on the trays, each separately eyeing the clock to count the remaining free time until they had to start paying attention again.

"Well," Ryou finally said, catching Marik's interest, "if you'd like, I could come by after school and help you work out it's name!" he smiled at his friend.

"Cool!" Marik stood up with his tray, Ryou following suit, "we can have a cat-name-a-thon!" he declared with a laugh.

After school that day and the walk home that followed, Ryou and Marik came through the door, Marik noticeably panicked about what the cat might've done while he was gone, especially considering what it had so immaculately achieved when he was somewhere as simple as a different room. Much to Marik's relief the house looked a great deal the same, save for the somewhat angry looking cat glaring at him from the windowsill as it faced out the glass.

"Yikes!" squeaked Ryou as the cat caught his eye, "Marik, this is your new cat?" he whined quietly, immediately intimidated by the animal. As soon as the frightened boy stepped towards Marik, the cat jumped down from the windowsill and moved forward threateningly, growling deeply. Ryou backed away, whimpering and pulling his hands in to his chest in fear of the creature. "No!" Marik scolded. The cat stopped, he looked up, his usual displeased eyes laced with confusion, Ryou looked up rather unsurely as well. Marik continued to stare firmly back at the cat, not willing to stand for his only friend being bullied. "No!" he shouted powerfully again, stamping his right foot at the feline to convey his point. A staring match for the ages ensued, defensive animalistic glare meeting determined human gaze with Ryou's head nodding from one to the other all the while, as if placing bets in his mind as to who would be the first to crack.

Finally the cat blinked, nodding so slightly that only the blond could notice it before he retreated into the living room again and disappeared somewhere between it and the kitchen.

"That was scary" Ryou whispered, still afraid to match stares with the cat that he was sure he would be meeting again in his nightmares. "Don't worry about him" Marik said softly, dismissing the whole act with a wave of his hand, "he only attacks furniture and homework!" he smiled, _'yet'_ he added mentally so as not to scare Ryou.

"Well," he said, relaxing a little more into the room and setting his bag down on the sofa, "I brought something that should help get the ball rolling while we try to figure out his name" he grinned as he pulled out a pet magazine and held it up to his friend, pointing specifically to the bottom corner.

"Top 10 names for your new pet" Marik read then smiled at his pale friend when the information processed. "Let's get started!" he declared triumphantly.

Ryou flicked through the glossy pages as they both sat on the floor, taking care not to cut his fingers on the edges of each page. "Here it is!" he announced as he set the book down in front of them. They read through a few of the names that had made the cut, each one rather well-known from other famous pets.

"I don't know," said Marik hesitantly after scanning the first 7 or so, "most of these look like dog's names" he whined as he looked over Lassie and Spot again. "The only one that looks like a cat name is Fluffy and I don't think he'd appreciate that!" he smiled, imagining the look on the cat's face if he called him that.

"Well, it's worth a try" Ryou suggested, smiling back.

Marik nodded and turned to the kitchen door, "Kitty!" he called.

Like a flash of lightning the feline came flying into the room, paws barely touching the ground as it raced through the room, dodging furniture all the way until it reached the magazine on the carpet, skidding abruptly to a halt just before the pages. Marik was about to call again but lost his words and almost forgot to breath when the cat suddenly appeared before him, Ryou as usual was left speechless and simply watching on in slight fear with his arms folded into his chest. The cat reached one stunning white paw forward and extended 3 sharp, shiny claws from between each delicate finger. He immediately took to dragging them through the sleek pages before him and ripping paragraphs, sentences and words into shreds. The two boys covered their faces with their arms for fear that they might be shredded too, Ryou practically curling into a ball in fright of the creature. Eventually the sounds of ripping stopped but the teenagers kept their guards up just to be safe, neither would've put it past the cat to pull a trick. Finally Marik took his arms down from his face, squinting to see the damage, when he stared in awe of the creation laid out just a few centimetres in front of him. "Ryou! Ryou look at this!" he whispered astounded as he nudged his trembling friend.

"What is it?" Ryou stuttered, pulling his face up ever so slightly and sitting forward sunned when he saw the art positioned ahead of him.

The cat smiled cunningly, a smug grin gracing his features as he sat proudly behind his makeshift handiwork of letters, each ripped from a different word and placed carefully together in the right order to spell a word that he hoped would send the boys in the right direction.

**B A K U R A**


	4. Friend

"I don't understand" Ryou said. He and Marik had been repeating that same phrase and trying to answer it ever since the cat, now known to be called Bakura, had communicated with them. After spelling his name out to them with the destruction of their magazine he had left the room smugly and the boys had retreated upstairs to ponder the events privately.

Marik was trying desperately to put everything he'd learned together, racking his brain in the hopes that all the information would come together in one quick blast and everything would suddenly make sense to him, but just as he thought he was about to get everything sorted he would remember something else the cat had done and then when he tried to remember everything together again he would miss something and have to start all over again. It was all too much for his mind to hold on to at once. He sighed and fell backwards so that he was laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling whilst trying to figure out why things like this had to happen to him.

"Why don't you just ask?"

"What?" Marik suddenly snapped back to reality by the sound of Ryou's soft voice. He sat up and gazed at his friend looking back at him from the bottom of the bed.

"It's obvious you've got questions on your mind" Ryou explained, "I have too, why not just ask Bakura?" he smiled.

Marik thought about this. It did sound like a good idea, he had more questions than his freshly shredded maths homework, but he wasn't sure if giving the malevolent creature a reason to rip up more innocent articles was such a good idea. "I don't know" he said hesitantly, "I might just take some time to think about this" his voice trailed off along with his thoughts, all of sudden he found himself thinking a lot more seriously about things he'd normally have done without thinking, as if the simple presence of the pet had brought out some deeper philosophical side of him.

"Alright" Ryou said quietly with a sympathetic smile, he was always smiling Marik noted mentally, and always rather quiet too.

Marik returned to reality again, noticing for the first time that his deep thought over everything had Ryou looking concerned. "besides," he smiled continuing his last statement, "somehow I don't think that thing would obey me anyway!"

_A delicate white ear twitched. Bakura sat patiently outside the boy's door, he felt confident after having successfully made contact with the boy and correcting him on how to properly refer to the proud feline. That wasn't the only reason he was eavesdropping on his new housemate, for a reason he could neither explain nor bring himself to think about, he felt a certain ownership over the boy, as if it were his boy and it was his job to watch over it and keep it in one piece, a feeling he assumed was mutual between the two, that is until that last sentence struck his soft ear drums._

_At first a feeling spread through him that felt awful to say the least, a feeling of deep sadness, heartbreak he even thought but quickly shook the thought from his head, he didn't need the child whatsoever. In a matter of seconds the sad feeling had been replaced with rage and he raised his small pale body from the rough carpet and padded quietly down the hall._

"Yeah, I suppose" Ryou said hesitantly. He smiled at his friend as he did with everyone and everything else, but this time his smile was not entirely honest, behind it he suddenly felt a great feeling of guilt, the kind that only comes after hurting a close friend. Ryou frowned immediately upon recognising the emotion and turned to Marik swiftly, "are you alright?" he asked in a rushed, almost panicked voice. "Erm, yeah… I think so, why?" asked a startled Marik, giving Ryou a strange look. "Oh, alright" he said in a more relaxed tone, putting his head down a bit, "I just got the weirdest feeling, like I'd made you mad or something!" he admitted embarrassedly with a nervous chuckle. The Egyptian smiled at his panicky friend, he always seemed to be worried about hurting other people.

"C'mon!" he said sliding off the bed and standing in front of the doorway, "why don't we go get something to eat?" he offered as an alternative to a further awkward silence between the two. Ryou nodded and got up to follow his friend.

They chatted about various school events as they entered the kitchen, stopping dead at the sight they were welcomed with. Just as had happened with Marik's room on the first day he'd let Bakura out of his cage, the kitchen lay in shambles. Many of the appliances were unplugged or had their cords slashed by a set of crafty claws, any appliances featuring glass were shattered yet curiously no broken glass was present anywhere in the room, the fridge was open for no more reason than to display the damage to various foods within and many bottles of juice and containers of food lay open and spilled on the tiled floor.

The boys stared on in silent disbelief until a swift scratching noise caught their attention. Both gazes immediately snapped to the source of the sound, the cat who'd been the source of all the trouble and discussions they'd been having since yesterday. Usually after having destroyed someone else's property in such a monstrous manner the animal would be sneering at them like a villain and lapping up the horrified looks that preyed on their features, but instead he simply scowled at the teenagers from his position in the shadows of a nearby cupboard.

Marik tried to force out any word that would tell the cat what he had done was wrong but nothing came to mind whatsoever, he was left literally speechless at the mess, Ryou in much the same situation.

The cat leaped down from the counter and grunted loudly and irritably as it stomped past them as best it could with it's small paws, kicking something in Marik's direction as he exited.

"What's this?" Marik asked, noticing the small sheet of paper at his feet. He lifted it gently and Ryou shuffled over next to him to investigate it also. It was a simple plain white piece of paper with a few pieces of their magazine stuck to it, each letter spaced out quite far and positioned quite awkwardly, as if someone had put it together with their feet. The letters spelled out a simple word but someone, or something as the case May be, had slashed the word down the middle with a sharp claw so as to accentuate that the word no longer had meaning as it did when the paper was made. Marik read this word over and over, checking again and again each time hoping that it wasn't really what he was looking at, that this wasn't real.

"Oh no…" he whispered brokenly as the now sliced word finally processed in his mind,

**F R I E N D**


End file.
